Tough Justice Series Box Set: Parts 1-8. Carla Cassidy

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       CHAPTER SEVEN

      The team met briefly at noon the next day. The Crisis Management Unit was coordinating with NYPD, and an officer in charge had reported that they’d scoured the hotel room where Dunst had stayed, and no phone had been found.

      Hotel records had shown that no calls had come in or gone out of the room Dunst had checked into during the time of his stay, leaving the issue of a cell phone still a mystery. He had to have been contacted in some way in order to leave the hotel room to meet with whomever had been in the SUV.

      A preliminary autopsy report had come in on Lara Bowman. She’d been stabbed twice in the heart with a six-inch serrated knife that had yet to be found. Boze had also found slivers of wood to indicate that the knife had a wooden handle. They were all pieces of a puzzle that still didn’t fit anywhere.

      “Who did you talk to yesterday at the prison?” Lara asked Mei.

      “We tried to interview three members of the Moretti organization. The first was Lyle Brennen. He basically told us to get screwed, and that was it,” Mei replied.

      “He was a low-level operative. I doubt if he’d know anything about what Moretti is up to now,” Lara said.

      “The second we talked to was Brett Noland. He had more colorful language for us and told us he wouldn’t take a million dollars to turn on Moretti because a dead man couldn’t spend any money,” Ty said.

      “And the third we tried to interview, Jacob Withers, refused to even meet with us. We plan on trying to talk to a few more today.”

      “All of the guys you mentioned were definitely low on the food chain in the organization,” Lara said. “You need to talk to some of the mid-level operatives to see if they know something.”

      “Names,” Mei said with a pen in her hand and a piece of paper before her.

      Lara frowned as she thought of the men who had been a part of the madness of Moretti. After the convictions, they were broken up and sent to various federal penitentiaries. “See if Jimmy Bannister or Ramone Espinoso will talk to you. Both of them are at Long Island and were mid-level men who worked both the drug operation and the prostitution side of things.”

      “Got it,” Mei said. “And hopefully one of them will know something and be in a sharing kind of mood.”

      “Yeah, right,” Xander said sarcastically. “Maybe they’ll be all warm and fuzzy for you.”

      Lara ignored him as did everyone else at the table. She had quickly learned that Xander had no filter. He just said whatever popped into his head at the moment.

      “Why don’t we have a complete update at seven in the morning?” Victoria said. “Of course, if anything comes up in the meantime, let me know.” With that the meeting ended. Mei and Ty left to go back to the prison to finish up interviews. Xander was going to check with more friends and relatives of Lara Bowman to see if anything connected her to Dunst.

      Cass planned to stay in her tech room and monitor crimes around the surrounding areas to see if anything that might be tied to what they were dealing with popped up in any other part of the city or back in Chicago.

      Nick and Lara agreed it was time to talk with Tina’s parents. They headed back to Brooklyn, neither of them speaking on the ride.

      Lara spent the time steeling herself for talking to grieving parents who had just laid their only child to rest the day before.

      She didn’t deal well with emotions, her own or other people’s, and she knew there was no way this wasn’t going to be an intense, emotional interview.

      She pulled the collar of her suede coat closer around her neck despite the fact that the temperature in the car was just fine. It was that damned inner chill that she’d been unable to shake since the moment she’d heard about the ink pad and stamp in Dunst’s pocket.

      She glanced over at Nick. His taut jaw and the faint throb of a vein at his temple let her know that this was an interview he’d like to skip, as well.

      There was no skillful way to interrogate grieving parents. There were no words to fix their world that had exploded apart with the untimely death of their child, in this case an only child.

      They hadn’t called ahead. They’d been afraid that John and Heather Cole might refuse to meet with them. The last thing they’d want to do was relive the nightmare, but no stone left unturned, Lara reminded herself. No matter how difficult it might be for everyone involved, they all would have to sit through questioning.

      Although the Cole brownstone was only a couple of blocks away from Dunst’s, the difference in the neighborhoods was like night and day. The street where the Coles lived was clean, the houses neatly painted, with many of them sporting the last of late fading summer flowers in window boxes or along the walkways.

      Dunst’s street was for criminals and lowlifes; this area was for families and people who shared a pride of ownership and communal bonds.

      They found a parking space two houses down from the Coles’ place and got out. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon; the autumn air was warm enough that several people sat outside on their stoops, and one woman was pulling weeds in what was left of a flower garden.

      They all eyed Nick and Lara with suspicion as they climbed the steps to the Cole house. “Are you ready for this?” Nick asked.

      “No.” СКАЧАТЬ